The room was pitch black, obscuring everything from sight except for the tall silhouette of Zhou Zhijun towering before her.
"Why aren't you wearing your underbodice?"
The man's hot breath fanned the top of her head, the heat trailing down to her neck, searing against her skin.
She bit her lower lip, a streak of stubbornness in her voice. "I'm not wearing it."
"Tao, I cherish you. The kind of cherish that holds you in the deepest part of my heart. I, Zhou Zhijun, am just a rough man. I don't know how to put this feeling into words so you'd understand, but I simply cannot bear to see you wronged."
"Stop talking. Just go."
Even the sliver of light seeping through the crack in the door was completely blocked by his towering frame.
He reached out to cup her flushed, burning face, gently wiping away her tears with the pads of his thumbs.
...
"Be a good girl, let me help you put it on." His voice was hoarse and gruff, yet coated with a thin layer of tenderness, as if coaxing a sick child who refused to take their medicine.
Chuntao held her breath, not daring to move an inch.
The man meticulously tied the strings of her underbodice, then fastened her outer garments, button by button.
Zhou Zhijun pulled a few crumpled banknotes from his pocket, pressed them into her hand, and turned to leave.
Just what kind of man was Zhou Zhijun? At times, he could be utterly terrifying.
Yet just moments ago, the way he dressed her and fastened her buttons had been so gentle, so unbelievably soft. Like a warm wad of cotton, his actions tightly enveloped her freezing heart.
She clutched the crumpled banknotes in her hand, a sudden stinging sensation prickling her nose.
Aunt Zhou wanted to take her in as a goddaughter. Chuntao suddenly shuddered at a realization—could this have been Zhou Zhijun's idea all along?
Why on earth was he doing this? Was it just to have a legitimate excuse to get closer to her?
Chuntao was suddenly filled with regret; she never should have agreed to Aunt Zhou's offer. But words spoken were like spilled water—they could never be taken back!
In the rural villages of that era, taking on god-relatives was a common practice. Some ties were forged in childhood, while others were initiated by elders when the younger generation had already grown up.
But establishing such a bond was not something done casually. According to local customs, the younger party had to buy four specific types of gifts for the elder, and the elder would offer a return gift, typically items like fabric or shoes.
Zhou Zhijun knew she was penniless. The money he had pressed into her hands was meant for her to buy those very gifts for Aunt Zhou.
This man... Chuntao found herself understanding him less and less.
He was bad, yet not rotten to the bone; he was good, yet his goodness was never out in the open. This feeling of wanting to hate him, yet being completely unable to harden her heart against him, was the most tormenting of all.
Chuntao's heart felt torn between two opposing forces. Like two ropes twisting together, they wound tighter and tighter until they became an inextricable, tangled mess.
She could not break free from the shackles of familial ties, yet Zhou Zhijun had forcefully pushed her right to the edge of a cliff. A single tremor would send her plummeting, leaving her shattered into dust.
She felt as though she were stumbling blindly through this pitch-black night without direction, devoid of even a sliver of light, simply drifting wherever her feet took her.
Perhaps one day she would fall off that cliff, or tumble into a well or a ditch, closing her eyes to meet her end. But until that end came, she had to keep walking. She couldn't stop!
The more she dwelled on it, the more suffocating it felt, and the more suffocating it felt, the more her mind raced. But life still had to be lived, inch by agonizing inch. Overthinking was useless.
She forced herself to stop these wild thoughts. From the yard, the soft grunting of the young sow drifted in, a sound that brought a faint stir to her deadened heart.
She told herself that once the sow birthed its piglets, she could sell them and use the money to buy an ox. Then, she could learn to plow the fields herself and never have to rely on anyone ever again.
Her grandmother used to say that whatever you owed others would have to be paid back sooner or later. If you couldn't repay it in one way, you'd have to repay it in another.
She didn't want to owe anyone anything, least of all favors. Yet, in the midst of these bitter, grueling days, she had ultimately failed to hold her bottom line.
With trembling hands, she stuffed the banknotes into her pocket. Chuntao lifted her tear-blurred eyes, gazing out into the impenetrable darkness of the night.
No one knew that within that darkness lay an unspeakable humiliation, a faint fluttering of her heart that she utterly despised, and the agonizing entanglement of both hating and longing for him.
These conflicting emotions wrapped tightly around her heart like suffocating vines. She told herself over and over that she ought to hate him, yet every time he drew near, her breath would catch, and she would lose all sense of reason.
